Correction: In relation to Gay's misrepresentations of the facts about the
termination of Breuer's treatment of Anna O., I wrote in rebuttal of Gay:
"There was no 'misremembering' by Freud." This is not entirely accurate.
In the course of "reconstructing" his phoney story of the "phantom
pregnancy" of Anna O., Freud made an error that did involve
misremembering, though since the error in question resulted in supposed
corroborating evidence for his invented story one wonders whether it was
really Freud's memory at fault -- it is equally likely that he simply put
this erroneous item in the story to bolster its plausibility. As Freud
told the story (to Ernest Jones and other colleagues) Breuer's supposed
panic-stricken "flight" from the patient in June 1882 led to his taking a
second honeymoon with his wife, resulting in the birth of their last
child, Dora. But Dora was born some three months *before* the termination
of the treatment! Misremembering or deliberate falsehood? Who knows? As
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen writes in relation to the different versions of this
story that floated around in Freud's circle: "But who even cares, in the
unreal, derealized universe of psychoanalysis, where interpretation passes
for reality and fiction is taken for truth." (*Remembering Anna O.: A
Century of Mystification*, Routledge, 1996, p. 47)

Allen Esterson

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